The X-Wing Miniatures game has three factions. The first two are obvious: Rebellion and Empire (or Resistance and First Order in new money). The third group, Scum and Villainy, is a little less well nailed down. The movies (and the rest) focus on goodies versus baddies, only flirting with the greyer side of things when looking for flavour or pathos. As such, this means that the big space battles (the war bit of Star Wars) don’t feature many rogues. Which fits the movies fine, but is a bit tricky when you’re designing a space combat game.
The M12-L Kimogila Fighter is a small fighter used by the Hutt Empire (as in Jabba and chums). The ship can be found in the Star Wars Galaxies video game and various RPGs, and this is the first time it’s had its own ‘toy’. It’s meant to be a heavy fighter and the ship certainly looks the part; the expansion pack includes a squat looking ship which rather resembles the love child between a World War Two aeroplane and a rather fat moth. It’s painted in the tan and brown colours of the Hutt Empire, giving it a sinister and organic look.
Rules-wise, it’s an interesting addition the Scum factions long list of specialised ships. Most of its basic moves remove stress, but the turns all cause stress. This makes it a decent dogfighter, though getting it into position is going to be tricky and dangerous.
It has two interesting features. One is the reload action and the plasma torpedo card that the set comes with, making it a merchant of exploding firepower. With a decent hull and two shields, you can have a squad of these and deal a lot of damage early on and be confident you’ll survive later on. The saturation salvo card also adds to the missile based danger. The ship also has a ‘bullseye firing arc’, which means if it’s got you dead in its sites, it’s very hard to dodge an attack. This gives the ship a real dog-fighter feel missing from previous waves on X-Wing.
On the table, this is fun and intuitive to play. It lends itself to friendly jousts rather than slogfests and works well in almost any squadron.
M12-L KIMOGILA FIGHTER EXPANSION PACK / PUBLISHER: FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
